Almost as a companion to the Japan Archive edition, the UK Culture of Soul label have issued their own overview of City Pop and J-Boogie. As a second showcase of a sound that expressed the optimism and exuberance of Japan's 1980s economic boomtimes, "Tokyo Nights: Female J-Pop & Boogie Funk" is focused more explicitly on the women-led bands and female solo artists within these concurrent genres. Both compilations present a music which took in influences from Caribbean reggae and disco, Pacific Island exotica, American R&B and boogie, and a fixation on technological futurism. Look no further than Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki & Tatsuro Yamashita's album Pacific, for evidence of the riches to come of this techno-exotica fusion. Having established themselves in electronic solo and group efforts of the decade before, producers like Tatsuro Yamashita, Toshiki Kadomatsu, Hiroshi Sato, the hugely influential Haruomi Hosono (who is himself going through a reissue revival in the west), were quick to embrace the latest studio equipment and technology. Their roles on both of these collections are as producers and engineers on a staggering multitude of albums. More than just working behind the scenes, these producers generated the thematic character and mode of much of this decade's sound. It is a sound to a time of economic success in Japan; urban lifestyles of indulgence, and the taste for nightlife, produced glitzy discotheques and a soundtrack to this new, lavish era. Epitomizing these attitudes, City Pop emerged as a sonic expression of the imagined neon wonderlands dotted with sandy beaches and metropolitan skylines.

Documenting adventures in explorative modern music, film, visual art, architecture, design and performance. Regardless of genre, class or style. Essentially thoughts, reflections and criticism on non-commercial contemporary artforms that come to my attention. Either through witnessing them here in my home city, while traveling abroad, or the journalistic work of others. As well as occasional interjections of existential, experiential, cultural or political enthusiasms and consternations that may crop up along the way. ie; Life.